Mac OS X Lion: It’s Many Languages & Voices

Mac OS X Lion was first introduced back in March. Of it’s many things to offer, one cool feature in particular is the ability to have high-quality text-to-speech voices in 22 different languages! There are over 50 new voices that are also available in different dialects, as well as languages, which is a first for text-to-speech functionality. Text-to-speech voices are now available in Arabic, three different Chinese dialects, Czech, Danish, two varieties of Dutch, Finnish, two French dialects, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, two Portuguese dialects, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, two Spanish dialects, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish. Like a few other features of OS X Lion, Apple hasn’t made these new voices easily discoverable unless you know where to look for them. It’s also a bit of a white lie to advertise that they’re “included” with OS X, as they are not included in the standard Lion install and require a separate download, for free, nonetheless, but still a separate download. Have fun playing with them! Sometime you can choose a phrase, language and dialect that can sound pretty funny!!